We'd all like to believe that if we died suddenly in a freak apartment accident involving a bottle of Febreze and an unstable floor lamp, someone would notice.

We'd like to believe that our friendly Maine neighbor would miss hearing us scamper down the back staircase in the morning on our way to work.

Or that the fella at the coffee shop would wonder why we hadn't come in for our morning cup of sugar and coffee.

Or that our office would come to a near standstill at 9:05 a.m. when the star employee (who, really, keeps the whole place together) didn't show up.

Or that our beloved friends and drinking cohorts would be ardently pounding down our apartment door wondering why they hadn't seen or heard from us in 24 hours.

But in truth, days might go by.

I'm lucky, though. I have a friend who's a wee bit text obsessed. She sends me a message nearly every morning, even if just to say, "What's shakin'?"

If I don't reply, she might send one at lunch, too.

Sure, it's slightly stalkerish (can you blame her?) but I tell you what - if you die in a freak Febreze/floor lamp accident on a Saturday afternoon with no one else around, a diligent stalker might be the first one to notice. He or she may even be able to leap out from your shrubs, jimmy the window and provide you some much-needed CPR before life complete drains from your body.

(Or he may just wait it out, then haul your corpse back to his place, seat it at the kitchen table, cook it dinner and then challenge it to a morbid [and truly one-sided] game of Trivial Pursuit.)

But back to my original point.

So this friend of mine sends a text message and hears nothing back, so she tries again and again hears nothing. Thinking that was unusual, she calls and gets, "We're sorry, the customer you're trying to call is not available at this time."

Worried now, she sends me an e-mail asking if I'm a) alive and b) aware that my phone is dead.

No, I had no idea. But I went on over to the AT&T store and had the issue resolved, the service reinstated.

I gave my pal a call after leaving the store and she asked, "Am I your first phone call now that your phone is working again?"

"Yes," I said. "Because you're the only one who noticed. Had I died, it would have been your frantic phone call to the cops that would lead to the discovery of my cold cadaver."

So thanks, buddy, for noticing my absence. Should you ever mysteriously disappear without warning, I hope to notice it too.